


Lose Your Stars (Close Your Eyes)

by ambivalentlangst



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Heavy Refefences to Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, POV Wanda Maximoff, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reconciliation, Tony Stark Is Not Coping, Wanda Lived AU, dead pepper potts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambivalentlangst/pseuds/ambivalentlangst
Summary: Tony Stark has come back to Earth a different, pained man. Wanda finds him alone in the kitchen, holding a glass of whiskey he’s yet to drink. She gets some cranberry juice for herself and settles in.





	Lose Your Stars (Close Your Eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> I legitimately have no idea where this concept came from and that’s all the tea I’ve got on that

Wanda has lost her brother and her parents, two of them to a bomb with the name of the man in front of her emblazoned on its side and the other felled with a million tiny holes in his body, the marks of the only thing that managed to catch up with him. The same man is a part of that as well, just as she is. Even so, she has done her best to forgive.   
  
She walks into the kitchen of the Avengers’ current, shared dwellings, courtesy of Wakanda. She pours herself a glass of cranberry juice from the fridge and takes a seat next to Stark, who stares into the amber recesses of his own drink like if he focuses enough, it’ll bring his losses back. She is young, younger than the rest of them, and in a twisted sort of light, retains some innocence.   
  
Her love and hate are still somewhat pure, she clings to black and white because her mind can barely handle the strain of that, let alone grey, but Stark—Tony, she’s trying to work up to calling him—is a convoluted mess of guilt and anger that is bubbling constantly below his weary surface. They have never been friends, likely never will be, but Wanda is trying. 

 

She lays a hand on his arm and even then pulls away when he flinches. Stark does not speak—merely turns his knuckles a few shades lighter as he grips his whiskey. 

 

“What was it like?” Wanda asks instead. She thinks of the stars fondly, has ever since she was trapped in rubble for days on end certain that she would never see them again. “The world beyond ours. I always thought this one was too vast, much more complicated then I was once led to believe. It’s exhausting, trying to keep up.”   
  
Stark barks a laugh. She has yet to see any liquor actually pass his lips. “That about sums it up,” he rasps. He has said very little since returning to Earth with an alien that had to walk him to Steve’s arms, where he collapsed with a grunt of pain. Wanda chases away the memory of the terror in Steve’s eyes as he held him with a swig of her juice. She doesn’t enjoy the tart roll of its flavor on her palate like usual. The fear that began building within their leader from the moment Barnes disappeared and that hastened upon realizing that he could lose Stark too, has not gone unnoticed.   
  
She attempts to keep the conversation alive, pretending she has slept in the time since Vision had rolled to the ground, no more than a computer without a charge. The layers of concealer under her eyes feel unnaturally heavy. “The stars?” she prods again, nothing more than what pain she can’t manage to stifle and curiosity in her voice.   
  
Stark shrugs noncommittally. Wanda examines the silver at his temples and the tight set of his jaw. She was not directly told that his lover has passed, but the pure pain radiating from Stark when he found out sent Wanda to her knees. That was communication of his plight aplenty, and it is not something she forgets easily.    
  
(She thinks of Pietro and Vision, the smoldering red of metallic eyes and fingers ruffling her hair.)   
  
“I didn’t see much of it,” he says lowly. “I was busy trying not to kill a wizard and some extra cargo.” His own words send up another spike of pain, different, but enough to make Wanda set her glass down for fear her trembling fingers will be the cause of its shattering. She tries not to pry, nowadays. Even exploiting Stark’s deepest fears, seeing the people he saved the world with die and blame him for it, had not caused the horrific variant of pain in him she couldn’t escape.   
  
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.   
  
Stark’s fingers tap with disconcerting gravitas on the side of his drink. “What for? You tried, didn’t you? It was too late. We—“ His face grows dark very quickly. “ _ I _ should’ve stopped him.” Wanda has made sure she hasn’t been around for much debriefing, but she supposes Stark would know by now that for all the strength it took her to kill Vision, it was worth just as little in the end as his own efforts.   
  
She merely shakes her head, feeling the throbbing ache of Stark’s emotions create the beginnings of a migraine in her own head. “Not for me. That the night sky will never bring you comfort again. It’s a terrible thing, to fear something you can’t escape.”   
  
Tony deflects, as Wanda knows him to be prone to do, though she had once perceived the tic as arrogance. “Do you know how he got the time stone?”    
  
His words are short, clipped. If he issued a threat with the same emotion in the inquiry—or lack thereof—she’d run from him as fast and far as she could. The two of them have always been their own little Alpha Centauri: orbiting around the central point of the Avengers with a berth formed out of mutual fear as wide as they can stretch it. As it is, Wanda feels nothing but their shared grief upon hearing him speak. She shakes her head, attempting to convince herself that if she just takes another sip of her juice, she’ll be able to soothe herself.

  
(It tastes like ash, like a country that became a battlefield that became stained with loss and empty space where warriors once made their stand.)   
  
Stark laughs bitterly.    
  
The sound puckers Wanda’s skin under the red jacket she still wears because it’s not so many shades from the color of  _ his _ skin before it turned to a sickening shade of grey. Wanda, now more than ever, wishes she still had the sort of hateful naivety that allowed her to cling to black and white.   
  
“The guy protecting it gave it up for  _ me _ ,” he hisses. The venom in the admission is palpable, but Wanda does not need to spare even a second for confusion. She knows very well that the poison is meant for no one but Stark himself.   
  
Another crack of laughter, more hysterical than jaded. “I’d give anything to make him return it. To go back and change it. He gave it up to save my life and then one by one— _ poof _ .” He makes a little gesture with his hand that emphasizes the childish sound, making his point all the more macabre. “One by one they all blew away. Quill, his friends. Strange himself.” The names are not familiar to Wanda, but they don’t spark the agony within Stark that cripples her even worse than when he thinks of his fiancé. Of who his fiancé was, anyway.   
  
“He gave it up to save me, and I was just grateful the kid wouldn’t have to watch his hero die and know just how pathetic I’ve always been.” There it is: the pain, the fury, the guilt, and the years of being burdened with it all and having it culminate in one fatal blow. Wanda gasps, clinging to the countertop as she tries to ignore the inky spots marching like ants across her line of sight. “The kid believed in me. He really thought that  _ Iron Man _ would pull through and save the day because that’s what I do for him.” He says his title—the crowning jewel of all his awards and honors—like it’s a particularly crude slur. “And I didn’t. He fell apart in my arms and I couldn’t do  _ anything _ !”   
  
Wanda is too busy maintaining a fumbling grip on consciousness to stop the glass Stark throws from shattering against the wall, sending booze and shards of crystal exploding against its surface. Tony says nothing about discomfort, though Wanda saw even through her pain that several pieces flew back from the force of the impact and cut him. The evidence shines in crimson beads on his forehead and cheek.   
  
She whimpers softly, hating how pitifully weak the utterance makes her appear. Stark whips around, the fire in his eyes burning him alive. “And I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry for letting him down and letting him come and letting him fade to—“    
  
Stark—Tony, because if there is ever a show of vulnerability that will thaw her to him, she’s drowning in its presentation—visibly chokes on the words he’s biting back. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, somehow even softer than before. “And I can be sorry all I want, but it won’t change a thing.”   
  
Wanda understands. It’s not in the same way, not when Tony tried his best and she  _ feels _ that, but Wanda thinks back to what she volunteered to become and hates herself a little more for it just like every time she remembers. She reaches out again, a hand going to his arm in just the same way as before.    
  
She’s regaining her bearings again. With every slow trail a drop of liquor makes down where it’s been spattered, a bit of Tony’s pain ebbs. The guilt for that though, for not wallowing in the pain that could tear someone less hardened to it apart, rises mercilessly to the topmost surface of his churning emotions that Wanda is helpless to block out. She has never cared much for Tony. Even with this outburst, she does not think there is all too much camaraderie between them. 

 

(Wanda is not foolish, and does not presume that this blatant display of his grief is anything more than something he can hold back no longer, her presence he damned.) 

 

Their relationship is the last thing on her mind. The man, the battle-seasoned warrior, the inventor, the  _ defender _ is still just a man. And when that man doesn’t pull away from her—of all people,  _ her _ —touch, she cannot help but offer any comfort she is able to provide to someone who so clearly needs it.

  
Wanda looks him in his eyes. She wishes she could tell him it will be okay, but right now neither of them have the heart to should such a bold-faced lie. All she can murmur is a simple, “I’m sorry,” though Tony doesn’t blame her and after all the amends and apologies Wanda has tried to make where Steve or Clint don’t stop her, she doesn’t either. They all have a part in this failure and those past. Certainly, there is history between her and Tony. True, Wanda has history with most everything, but theirs is darker than most.   
  
In response, to what little she’s given him—a second chance at accepting the smallest of kindnesses—Tony’s face crumples, head dropping to his chest. His fingers curl around her wrist in return, holding to it as tight as he is able. He will never think himself worthy enough to ask for anything more. There is an injustice there, of that Wanda is aware, but it is one she can no longer muster the energy to fight.


End file.
